Manthano ten Glossen Elleniken
by AnneMary
Summary: "I am learning the Greek language". Or, Percy Jackson attends a lesson on Classical Greek verb forms. What, you didn't think demigods magically knew how to speak Classical Greek the moment they found out their parentage, did you? The idea for this drabble came to me as I sat in a Koine Greek lecture this morning. Welcome to my pain.


**Just a pointless drabble which came to me as I sat in a Greek lecture. Mανθάνω** **την** **γλώσσην** **έλληνικήν (roughly, "man-than-oh teyn gloss-eyn elley-nik-eyn") means "I am learning the Greek language" (I hope). Welcome to my pain.**

 **What, you didn't think the demigods magically knew how to speak Classical Greek the moment they found out their parentage, did you? I'm studying Koine Greek, which is basically "Classical Greek for speakers of it as a second language" (after Alexander conquered everywhere from Macedonia to India, it became the main trade language for quite a few hundred years, even as everyone continued to speak their local languages), and while I love learning languages and I especially love reading the Bible in the original language, the lectures aren't exactly a joy.**

 **I don't own** _ **Percy Jackson and the Olympians**_ **. I don't even own a** _ **Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon**_ **. I do, however, own a copy of William Mounce's** _ **Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar**_ **, from which I am getting almost all of my information and most of Euphradeia's lines.**

Percy rubbed his head, squinting as the letters swam before his eyes. They weren't swimming in the way they normally did, rearranging themselves at whim on the page, but swimming in a somehow more normal way, fuzzing and wobbling somehow in time with the faint pounding in his head.

 _What_ was Euphradeia on about, again?

"... And as you know, there are two ways of forming the aorist tense in the Greek language, of which the first aorist is the most common. However, it is no less important to master the formation of the second aorist tense and holds no difference in meaning..."

That didn't really clear things up in the least.

Percy had actually been looking forwards to these lessons – the first time he'd ever looked forward to a lesson in his life – when he was told he had to attend Greek lessons. After all, Greek was the only language for which the letters behaved for him, so he thought he might actually be good at it. Or at least be able to pay attention.

Instead, he found himself seated behind a desk, on a none-too-comfortable wooden seat, listening to a somewhat dowdy-looking woman droning on and on about words he couldn't understand. What on earth was an 'airy tent'?

He shook his head, trying to pay attention again.

"The second aorist is formed with the component parts of an augment, the aorist active tense stem, a connecting vowel, and the secondary active personal endings. The augment letter is epsilon, and augmentation follows the same rules as for the imperfect tense..."

Percy could vaguely recall learning about the imperfect tense a few days ago, but he couldn't recall much about it. Or even what it did. Or how to form it, for that matter. How did Chiron or anyone ever expect them to learn how to speak Greek if they never learnt how to say anything? It was all grammar, grammar, grammar, paradigms, paradigms, paradigms.

"The aorist active tense form is listed as the third form of the verb in the lexicon. In the active voice, a second aorist will always have a different stem from the present, because the root will always have to be modified to form the present tense tem. Otherwise, of course," the woman broken into a slightly dusty-sounding laugh, "You wouldn't be able to distinguish an imperfect from a second aorist!"

Percy wondered distantly where Chiron had found this woman from. She'd introduced herself was Euphradeia, the goddess of language, but she acted like the worst English teacher he'd ever had. Perhaps Mr. D had invented her for the sole purpose of torturing them. He considered that idea for a moment before discarding it in favour of fiddling with his shoe laces. Mr. D wasn't that patient. If he met this woman, he'd probably turn her into a bunch of grapes. Or sultanas.

"Although the tense stem changes are sometimes radical, they for the most part only involve the change of one letter, and it is important to memorise the verbal root and lexical form _exactly_. After all, eballon and ebalon are distinguished by only one letter!"

Percy squinted at her, as if that would clear things up. He couldn't hear a difference.

"Because the second aorist is an augmented tense, it uses secondary personal endings. In the active, the endings are identical to the imperfect active endings! Perseus, what are the secondary active personal endings?"

Percy started, surprised to be called on. "Uhm..."

"You know this, boy! Decline luo in the imperfect indicative! Eluon..."

"Eluon, elues, eluen; eluomen, eluete, eluon," Percy rattled off, before frowning at himself. He had no idea what he was saying, but she'd drilled them in that enough times yesterday, apparently. He had no idea he'd actually learnt it.

"Hupobarbarizeis teyn elleynikeyn," Euphradeia muttered to herself, and Percy glared. He couldn't understand that, but it sounded enough like 'barbarian" that he thought he should be offended. "What are the personal endings?"

Percy made a face. "Um..." If 'luo' was the verb, then everything else must be the endings, right? "On, es, en... uh, omen, ete, on?" he tried.

"No, no, no, no," Euphradeia shook her head. "Tell me the _personal endings_! I do not want to hear the connecting vowels! Remove the connecting vowels."

Percy shook his head, throwing up his hands. "I don't know!"

"Miss, miss!" the girl at the next desk – she couldn't have been more than seven or eight, and looked enough like Annabeth to be one of Athena's daughters – waved her hand in the air. "Nothing, sigma, iota, mu-epsilon-nu, tau-epsilon, nu-sigma-iota!"

Euphradeia graced her with a benevolent smile. "Exactly right, Sofia! Now, we will learn the declension paradigm for the second aorist active tense, using lambano, to receive. Repeat it after me: elabon, elabes, elaben; elabomen, elabete, elabon..."

Percy took a deep breath, forcibly stilled his bouncing knee, and repeated the words after her. He still had no idea what an 'airy tent' was.

" **Euphradeia" (** **εύφράδεια) is Classical Greek for "correctness of language", according to** _ **Liddell-Scott-Jones**_ **online. Since there doesn't seem to be a Greek god of language (it could be Hermes, Apollo, Athena, Mnemosyne, or any of the Muses, as far as I can tell), I've invented a minor goddess to be in charge of it.**

 **For reasons no-one seems to understand, 'aorist' is actually pronounced 'air-ist'.**

 **Έβαλλον is imperfect ("I was throwing") and έβαλον is aorist ("I threw"). They are, indeed, differentiated by only one letter – and it makes no difference to pronunciation.**

" **Ύποβαρβαρίζεις την** **έλληνικήν" means "you are speaking Greek like a barbarian" – to verb means "to speak rather like a foreigner" or "to speak broken Greek".**

 **I don't think Bible seminaries have updated their language-learning technique for about five hundred years, while mainstream language education has moved on to immersion and sensory input and relevance. Somehow I don't think a camp run by four-thousand-year-old beings would have moved on from the rote-grammar method of language acquisition, either.**


End file.
